As a class, Diablo 4‘s Warlock accommodates different types of leveling builds. You can choose to turn your character into a demon or evoke an army of demons to fight for you.
We decided for a cast-focused build to make the gameplay less stressful, as it allows you to attack enemies from a safe distance. You won’t need specific items or attributes to make it work. It has been designed around picking the right skills and playing to its strengths. To test its efficiency, we have played the whole Lord of Hatred campaign on hard difficulty using this build.
If you would like to play a Warlock caster who harnesses the flames of hell and is empowered by demons, this Diablo 4 Warlock leveling build is for you.
Warlock leveling build skills in Diablo 4
When it comes to the order you should spend skill points, there isn’t much to consider. You can only unlock new abilities when you reach certain levels. Because of this, we suggest spending skill points as skills and upgrades become available. Always prioritize unlocking the skills first for this build since they give you more tools to fight.
Here are all the skills you should run with this build:
Basic: Doom
Upgrades: Assimilation, Wrath, and Contagion
Doom is a mid-range basic skill in Diablo 4 that hits enemies in front of your character and marks them with stacks of hex. For each stack, an enemy takes increased damage from Abyss Skills based on their missing life.
The first upgrade you should unlock for Doom is Assimilation, which causes the basic skill to apply vulnerable, weakened, or slowed effects to other enemies when you hit a target already affected by at least one of these. Next, pick Wrath so Doom starts generating Wrath points for each hexed enemy. The final upgrade is Contagion. With this one, killing a hexed enemy causes Doom to spread hex to another enemy and deal damage.
Core: Blazing Scream
Upgrades: Cost Reduction and Skull Splitter
By casting Blazing Scream, you summon a demon skull that travels forward, hitting all enemies in its path. While active, the skull bounces off walls, making it possible to cover large areas or hit the same enemies multiple times in a narrow corridor.
With the Cost Reduction upgrade, the cost of casting Blazing Scream is reduced by 25% for 2 seconds. While this allows you to cast the skill more times, the second upgrade, Skull Splitter, increases the area it covers, as it causes Blazing Scream to fire lesser demon skulls to seek out enemies.
Defensive: Dark Prison
Upgrades: Weaken and Fortify
Dark Prison is a crowd-control area-of-effect skill that summons a totem which tether enemies around it. While it won’t keep bosses trapped, placing Dark Prison in their location still allows its secondary effects to work.
You want to run two upgrades with Dark Prison. Weaken applies the weakened effect to enemies within its area, reducing the damage dealt by enemies depending on their type (20% for normal, 15% for elites, and 10% for bosses). The second upgrade is Fortify. It adds an effect to Dark Prison that fortifies you for 1% of your Maximum Life whenever you hit enemies within its area. Fortify is a great defensive effect that creates a pool of HP to drain when you need healing.
Archfiend: Infernal Breath
Upgrades: Ramping Damage and Abyssal Torrent
Infernal Breath summons a large demonic head that breathes fire, damaging enemies in front of it. Initially, it is a bit tricky to use because enemies tend to move around, especially bosses, and none of them will stand still in front of the head taking all the damage. Even so, with the right upgrades, it becomes your most important single-target skill.
The Ramping Damage upgrade escalates Infernal Breath’s damage by 1% each time an enemy is hit by it, going up to 25%. Along with Ramping Damage, you’ll want to use Abyssal Torrent. This upgrade allows you to change the direction of the fire and, by recasting the skill, the demon head fires three spheres that deal significant damage. In addition, Abyssal Torrent also executes hexed enemies.
Sigil: Sigil of Chaos
Upgrades: Volatility Duration and Diabolic Rebuke
Sigil of Chaos is an important buff for Warlock and it works perfectly for this build. It is an area-of-effect skill that marks a circular area around a target, granting you volatility while you are within it. This effect randomly empowers Hellfire skills, increasing their damage to up to 50%. At the same time, enemies you kill within the Sigil’s area have a chance to explode, dealing damage to other enemies.
The upgrades you should run with this skill are meant to maximize the buff provided by Sigil of Chaos and make the most of the time you are within it. Volatility Duration allows your character to retain the volatility effect for 10 seconds after leaving the Sigil’s area, while Diabolic Rebuke deals a certain amount of damage (based on skill level) to enemies who attack you while you are within the Sigil’s area.
Soul Shards: Ritualist shard
Upgrade: Twisted Fragment
Although all four shards are strong, for this build you should select the Ritualist Shard. Passively, it buffs your Occult and Occult Hellfire skills based on the overpower stacks you have. This shard also grants you the active skill Summon Valloch, which summons a demon. During combat, cast the skill again to receive 10 overpower stacks and increase your resource regeneration.
How to play the warlock leveling build in Diablo 4
From level one to seven, your skill rotation is fairly basic. Focus on casting Blazing Scream whenever you have enough Wrath, then spam Doom to stack hex on enemies and generate Wrath.
Be careful when dealing with strong enemies, as Doom is a mid-range skill that forces you to get closer to enemies than you might want. Cast Dark Prison when dealing with large groups of enemies, so you can hit more targets with Doom and Blazing Scream with minimal effort.
Once you reach level eight, you will add Infernal Breath to your rotation, mainly for single-target situations. When fighting groups of enemies, try to cast it only after tethering some foes with Dark Prison to ensure its flames hit as many targets as possible.
At level 13, you finally get the Sigil of Chaos. From that point onward, you should always start fights by casting Sigil — and recasting it as soon as its effects end. Sigil is an important buff that increases the damage of your Blazing Scream casts. Try to place it on enemy positions and to fight within its area whenever possible.
The next step is to complete the Warlock quests to unlock the ritualist shard at level 15. This unique trait grants passive and active abilities. While the passive bonuses are powerful, at lower levels you want to add the Summon Vollach skill to your bar and use it on cooldown to always have overpower stacks.
At level 36, you unlock the Infernal Breath upgrade, Abyssal Torrent. This is the final piece of this build, and from this point forward, you’ll want to cast Abyssal Torrent and then recast it to fire three powerful orbs, along with the usual breath of fire. This attack, combined with the buffs from Sigil and Vollach can wipe out groups of regular enemies and cause a significant amount of damage to bosses. In addition, this upgrade allows you to change where the head is facing.
In the later stages of the campaign, once you have all the skills and upgrades, here’s your general rotation:
- Summon Vollach
- Sigil of Chaos
- Dark Prison
- Abyssal Torrent
- Blazing Scream
- Doom (if low on Wrath)
